Franklin Delano Roosevelt

AP Photo

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States, held that title longer than any man in history and dealt, during his time, with some of the greatest problems internal or external, which had faced the nation.

The internal crisis which existed at the time of his first inauguration, on March 4, 1933, when the nation’s economic system was faltering and its financial organism paralyzed by fear, was followed in his third term by the global war during which he and Winston Churchill emerged as leaders of the English-speaking world.

The years in between were packed with swift and drastic social and economic changes to make Mr. Roosevelt the most controversial figure in American history. Beloved by millions, hated, admired, feared and scorned by countless adversaries, he did much to shape the future of the nation he headed and the world.

As the young New York State senator who won national acclaim before he was 30; as the assistant secretary of the Navy before and during U.S. participation in the First World War; as the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for vice president in 1920 and as the governor of New York for two terms beginning in 1928, he had acheived unusual honors even before his presidency.

In the decade after Franklin Delano Roosevelt's death in 1945, Washington was noisy with the earnest clatter of typewriters. Public servants of all stripes labored to publish their recollections of Roosevelt.

Fifty years ago today, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the visionary President who led the nation out of the shadow of the Great Depression to the brink of victory in history's first global war, died in this tiny spa southwest of Atlanta.

Almost 45 years after Franklin D. Roosevelt returned from the Yalta conference, his heady vision of self-determination in Eastern Europe may finally be coming to pass, though in a manner quite different from the one he foresaw. In the intervening decades, ''Yalta'' has been one of the most charged words in the American political vocabulary - a potent symbol that critics have used to conjure sins from gross naivete to outright treason.

New insight into serious strains that developed between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston S. Churchill, after they forged a military alliance to defeat the Axis powers, has come to light in the complete correspondence between the two leaders.

Throughout American history, some of the best Inaugural addresses have come in times of peril. This year, as Barack Obama prepares his, the country is steeped in a recession at home and fighting two wars abroad.